The Winters Tale | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by the PG Shakespeare Team, a team of about twenty Project Gutenberg volunteers.

THE WINTER'S TALE
by William Shakespeare

Dramatis Personae.
LEONTES, King of Sicilia. MAMILLIUS, his son. CAMILLO, Sicilian Lord. ANTIGONUS, Sicilian Lord. CLEOMENES, Sicilian Lord. DION, Sicilian Lord. Other Sicilian Lords. Sicilian Gentlemen. Officers of a Court of Judicature. POLIXENES, King of Bohemia. FLORIZEL, his son. ARCHIDAMUS, a Bohemian Lord. A Mariner. Gaoler. An Old Shepherd, reputed father of Perdita. CLOWN, his son. Servant to the Old Shepherd. AUTOLYCUS, a rogue. TIME, as Chorus.
HERMIONE, Queen to Leontes. PERDITA, daughter to Leontes and Hermione. PAULINA, wife to Antigonus. EMILIA, a lady attending on the Queen. Other Ladies, attending on the Queen. MOPSA, shepherdess. DORCAS, shepherdess.
Lords, Ladies, and Attendants; Satyrs for a Dance; Shepherds, Shepherdesses, Guards, &c.
SCENE: Sometimes in Sicilia; sometimes in Bohemia.

ACT I.
SCENE I. Sicilia. An Antechamber in LEONTES' Palace.
[Enter CAMILLO and ARCHIDAMUS]
ARCHIDAMUS. If you shall chance, Camillo, to visit Bohemia, on the like occasion whereon my services are now on foot, you shall see, as I have said, great difference betwixt our Bohemia and your Sicilia.
CAMILLO. I think this coming summer the King of Sicilia means to pay Bohemia the visitation which he justly owes him.
ARCHIDAMUS. Wherein our entertainment shall shame us we will be justified in our loves; for indeed,--
CAMILLO. Beseech you,--
ARCHIDAMUS. Verily, I speak it in the freedom of my knowledge: we cannot with such magnificence--in so rare--I know not what to say.--We will give you sleepy drinks, that your senses, unintelligent of our insufficience, may, though they cannot praise us, as little accuse us.
CAMILLO. You pay a great deal too dear for what's given freely.
ARCHIDAMUS. Believe me, I speak as my understanding instructs me and as mine honesty puts it to utterance.
CAMILLO. Sicilia cannot show himself overkind to Bohemia. They were trained together in their childhoods; and there rooted betwixt them then such an affection which cannot choose but branch now. Since their more mature dignities and royal necessities made separation of their society, their encounters, though not personal, have been royally attorneyed with interchange of gifts, letters, loving embassies; that they have seemed to be together, though absent; shook hands, as over a vast; and embraced as it were from the ends of opposed winds. The heavens continue their loves!
ARCHIDAMUS. I think there is not in the world either malice or matter to alter it. You have an unspeakable comfort of your young Prince Mamillius: it is a gentleman of the greatest promise that ever came into my note.
CAMILLO. I very well agree with you in the hopes of him. It is a gallant child; one that indeed physics the subject, makes old hearts fresh: they that went on crutches ere he was born desire yet their life to see him a man.
ARCHIDAMUS. Would they else be content to die?
CAMILLO. Yes; if there were no other excuse why they should desire to live.
ARCHIDAMUS. If the king had no son, they would desire to live on crutches till he had one.
[Exeunt.]

SCENE II. The same. A Room of State in the Palace.
[Enter LEONTES, POLIXENES, HERMIONE, MAMILLIUS, CAMILLO, and Attendants.]
POLIXENES. Nine changes of the watery star hath been The shepherd's note since we have left our throne Without a burden: time